Woody Hayes watched the proceedings with the benevolent look of a consenting grandfather, his smile fixed on thousands of students and fans who stared, socialized and snapped photos of Ohio State football practice while hip-hop blared from the speakers.

Assistant coach Tim Hinton, in his 33rd year of coaching and third coaching tight ends and fullbacks at Ohio State, laughed when someone pointed at Hayes’ portrait on the wall of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center and asked whether he thought the old gentleman would have approved of this.

“Yeah, right,” Hinton said, smiling. “The music, the noise, no, no, no, no. But you know what? That’s the beauty of coach (Urban) Meyer. Times change. We do certain things we didn’t do 30 or 40 years ago, or even 15 or 10 years ago. You’ve got to stay up with it, and he does a great job of progressing and moving on.”

It’s not easy to imagine Hayes, who lived in fear of a spy seeing one his practices with binoculars through a window of the Fawcett Center on the other side of Olentangy River Road, inviting the student body to snap more photos of a spring practice than the wire services used to document World War II.

Perhaps he might have warmed up to it if he was given enough time — say, 200 or 300 years — though it’s unlikely Hayes would ever come around enough to allowing students to stretch and run sprints with the players the way Meyer does.

Still, after three of these student-appreciation days, it’s hard not to believe that this event isn’t in the top five Ohio State football-related events of the year.

The Ohio State-Michigan game is a clear No. 1, but after that it gets murky. The national championship game? Well, OK, if there is one. The Big Ten championship game? Same answer.

The Michigan State and Penn State games are bigger, but this event beats the stuffing out of an Illinois or Indiana snoozer, and especially that overrated spring scrimmage that will draw more people than some Super Bowls.

After the event, the students got 45 minutes to interact with players and coaches, and the smiles that it brings are priceless. At one point, I saw senior receiver Devin Smith pose for probably a dozen photos with students in less than a minute, and the subjects always walked away looking like they had been handed a $100 bill.

“I think it’s real good,” Smith said. “I think it’s a good idea for fans who support us every Saturday to come out and see what we do and interact with us. … Whatever I can do to put a smile on someone’s face, I don’t mind doing it.”

This is one time the players really seem like students, when they are just as apt to pull out their phones and snap a photo of something they saw. There’s a camaraderie here that doesn’t exist between players and alums. These students are their peers.

“It’s amazing to have our student body around and give them a piece of what we go through,” sophomore quarterback Cardale Jones said.

Jones kept talking about how much fun this was and used the word amazing two more times. A couple of minutes later, I saw him with his arms wrapped around two students while another snapped a photo.

Meanwhile, a few feet away, two of Jones’ teammates were huddled next to a skinny kid in an Ohio State hat, pointing and laughing about a photo he had on his phone.

What would Woody do? If he could see the smiles and the enthusiasm for football, he might do this.

“We’re still coaching a kid of this generation,” Hinton said. “The kids who go to school are in this generation, and you’re not going to change that. The discipline part and all that, we’re still like we were 50 years ago. We’re not changing that part. But this, yeah, why not? Why not? I thought it was a really good practice.”